Читать книгу Paul Among the Gentiles: A "Radical" Reading of Romans - Jacob P. B. Mortensen - Страница 17

Caroline Johnson Hodge is a self-declared radical. In the conclusion of her book If Sons, Then Heirs (2007) she writes:

Like others in the ‘radical’ new perspective, my reading of Paul insists on viewing him as a first-century Jew and thus opens the possibility that he had no critique of Judaism but remained fully faithful to the God of Israel and this God’s plan for the salvation of all peoples. Daniel Boyarin has characterized the Gaston/Gager approach, which my interpretation largely supports…1

What Johnson Hodge presents here is the positive evaluation of Judaism at the time of Paul, of Paul as a faithful Jew in service of the God of Israel, and of the ‘two covenant’ solution as proposed by Lloyd Gaston and John Gager. By confirming these propositions she falls within the main area of the radical perspective. However, her work does not seem to reveal any preoccupation with ideological or interfaith interests.

In her book, Johnson Hodge scrutinizes the perception of the identity of Paul’s addressees from ancient ideological and socio-historical perspectives. Her main hypothesis is that Paul uses the discourse of kinship and ethnicity to construct a myth of origins for Gentile followers of Christ.2 In socio-historical terms, she presents the (possible) core ideology of Paul’s message concerning the new-found identity of his Gentile addressees: Paul relies on the logic of patrilineal descent to create a new lineage for Gentiles as descendants of Abraham through Christ. The identity of the Gentiles relates to, but does not become one with, a Jewish identity. However, ‘being-in-Christ’ is not ethnically neutral, according to Johnson Hodge; it falls under the umbrella of Jewishness. But Gentiles-in-Christ do not become Jews, since Paul continuously calls them Gentiles throughout his letters. Consequently, Johnson Hodge argues that these Gentiles-in-Christ have a mixed or ‘hybrid’ identity, not completely other, but also not identical to their previous status. The reason for this not-ethnically-neutral identity is that Johnson Hodge believes that for Paul, ‘ethnic identity is inextricable from a people’s standing before God’.3 Israel stood as a nation (a collective whole) before God, and so do the Gentiles.

The merits of Johnson Hodge’s interpretation of Paul concern a major point in the reconstruction of Paul’s thought-world: a lucid description of the identity or self-understanding of Paul’s Gentile addressees. Furthermore, Johnson Hodge provides the flip side of the coin – the ideology supporting Paul’s construction of this Gentile identity: the ideology of patrilineal descent. These two elements comprise the received and ascribed identity of Paul’s addressees. Johnson Hodge also provides valuable exegetical interpretations of core passages of Paul’s letters. Specifically, her interpretation of Romans 8, which also furnishes the title of her book, is splendid.